Data Visualization

Matias Andina <mandina@mit.edu>

PAF — October 8, 2019

Today’s discussion

  1. Dos and Don’ts
  2. Know your Data
  3. DataViz Election

Dos and Dont’s

Font Size

Color

What do you use color for?

Source: http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/image/pallete.jpg

RColorBrewer

Y axis manipulation

When can we justify changing the y axis?

Don’t tell, show

Don’t tell, show

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a village near the forest. Whenever she went out, the little girl wore a red riding cloak, so everyone in the village called her Little Red Riding Hood. One morning, Little Red Riding Hood asked her mother if she could go to visit her grandmother as it had been awhile since they’d seen each other. “That’s a good idea,” her mother said. So they packed a nice basket for Little Red Riding Hood to take to her grandmother. When the basket was ready, the little girl put on her red cloak and kissed her mother goodbye. “Remember, go straight to Grandma’s house,” her mother cautioned. “Don’t dawdle along the way and please don’t talk to strangers! The woods are dangerous.” “Don’t worry, mommy,” said Little Red Riding Hood, “I’ll be careful.” But when Little Red Riding Hood noticed some lovely flowers in the woods, she forgot her promise to her mother. She picked a few, watched the butterflies flit about for awhile, listened to the frogs croaking and then picked a few more.

Don’t tell, show

Going 3D

source: serialmentor.com/dataviz

You should go 3D when it’s physically meaningful

War on Pies

Pies are great

Pies are great

Time to draw

Treemap

Know your Audience

Who are you talking to?

Amazon’s Last Price: 1725.45

Watch your words

The Power of Context

17550020191008

17:55:00 2019-10-08

17:55:00 2019-10-08

17:55:00 2019-10-08

Know Your Data

Data-types

Data come in all flavours

  • Numeric (Age, $, height, Life-Exp)
  • Categorical (Young/Old, Republican/Democrat)
  • Network (Environment, People Interaction)
  • Spatial (Maps, Geographical)

Numeric data

One variable – Distribution

Two variables – relationship

Choose your own adventure

Examples & DataViz Election

Warning: Following content is highly subjective!

Jackson Pollock. Free Form. 1946.

Advice

  • Pay attention to the order of bar plots.
  • Use direct labeling & get rid of legends.
  • Use color responsably. Mind diversity in color perception and monochrome prints.

References

R Packages

ggplot2, sf, cowplot, ggridges, ggforce, ggrepel, colorblindr

https://www.data-to-viz.com/

https://www.r-graph-gallery.com/

Books

https://serialmentor.com/dataviz/